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“On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine.”
― François La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales

“When Rachel Carson accepted the National Book Award, she said, 'if there is poetry in my book about the sea it is not because I deliberately put it there but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out poetry.”
― Jim Lynch, The Highest Tide

“Good. Proud. I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob.” He points to the breeder tanks. “Check tanks!”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”
― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

“It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”
― Erin Bow

“Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons- 'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.

Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories

“On the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars a s beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, ‘I survived’.

In a few breaths’ time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them as we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means the storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvellous, and then she will turn round and smile.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“My Father taught me how to be a man – and not by instilling in me a sense of machismo or an agenda of dominance. He taught me that a real man doesn’t take, he gives; he doesn’t use force, he uses logic; doesn’t play the role of trouble-maker, but rather, trouble-shooter; and most importantly, a real man is defined by what’s in his heart, not his pants.”
― Kevin Smith

“She's got so many azalea bushes, her yard's going to look like Gone With the Wind come spring. I don't like azaleas and I sure didn't like that movie, the way they made slavery look like a big happy tea party. If I'd played Mammy, I'd of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Maker her own damn man-catching dress.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Life is more than a job; jobs are more than a paycheck; and a country is more than its wealth. Education is more than the acquisition of marketable skills, and you are more than your ability to contribute to your employer’s bottom line or the nation’s GDP, no matter what the rhetoric of politicians or executives would have you think. To ask what college is for is to ask what life is for, what society is for—what people are for. Do students ever hear this? What they hear is a constant drumbeat, in the public discourse, that seeks to march them in the opposite direction. When policy makers talk about higher education, from the president all the way down, they talk exclusively in terms of math and science. Journalists and pundits—some of whom were humanities majors and none of whom are nurses or engineers—never tire of lecturing the young about the necessity of thinking prudently when choosing a course of study, the naïveté of wanting to learn things just because you’re curious about them.”
― William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

“(about William Blake)

As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me."

And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. ...He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy."

...He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“The strongest people I know
have been overtaken by their weaknesses.
They know what it’s like to lose control.
The strongest people I know
have cried in the shower and in their car.
They know loss and guilt all too well.
The strongest people I know aren’t bulletproof.
They have felt the searing pain of life’s shots.
The strongest people I know
make the decision every day to wake up
and place their two feet on the ground
even though they know the monsters beneath
their bed will grab at their ankles.
The strongest people I know
are not strong by definition, at all.
They are mistake-makers.
They are mess-creators.
They are survivors.”
― Alicia Cook, Stuff I've Been Feeling Lately

“To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other yardstick.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker: Dorothy L. Sayers' Witty Classic on the Trinity, Christianity, and Human Creativity

“Progress is made by the improvement of people, not the improvement of machines.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Blood of the Mantis

“In a world where you can choose anger or empathy, always choose empathy,”
― Abby Jimenez, Just for the Summer

“Getting what you want doesn't make you happy... Having doesn't make you happy: appreciating does; Happiness is more about appreciation than acquisition.”
― Katherine Center, Happiness for Beginners

“I would never tell you that the life you wanted couldn't have been exactly as great as you planned. But you have to live the life you have. You have to find inspiration in the struggle, and pull joy out of the hardship. [...] Because that's all we can do: Carry the sorrow when we have to, and absolutely savor the joy when we can.”
― Katherine Center, How to Walk Away

“There is no better people-watching than at the airport: the whole world packed into such a tight space, moving fast with all their essentials in their rolling bags. And what caught my attention, as I took a few breaths and lay my eyes on the crowds, were all the imperfections. Everybody had them. Every single person that walked past me had some kind of flaw. Bushy eyebrows, moles, flared nostrils, crooked teeth, crows'-feet, hunched backs, dowagers' humps, double chins, floppy earlobes, nose hairs, potbellies, scars, nicotine stains, upper arm fat, trick knees, saddlebags, collapsed arches, bruises, warts, puffy eyes, pimples. Nobody was perfect. Not even close. And everybody had wrinkles from smiling and squinting and craning their necks. Everybody had marks on their bodies from years of living - a trail of life left on them, evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they were.

In that moment, I suddenly loved us all the more for our flaws, for being broken and human, for being embarrassed and lonely, for being hopeful or tired or disappointed or sick or brave or angry. For being who we were, for making the world interesting. It was a good reminder that the human condition is imperfection. And that's how it's supposed to be.”
― Katherine Center, Everyone is Beautiful

“Well, you're lucky. Because love is something you can learn. Love is something you can practice. It's something you can choose to get good at. And here's how you do it. Appreciate your person.
That's it.
Well—first be sure to choose a good person. But we're all good people here.
Choose a good, imperfect person who leaves the cap off the toothpaste, and puts the toilet paper roll on upside down, and loads the dishwasher like a ferret on steroids—and then appreciate the hell out of that person. Train yourself to see their best, most delightful, most charming qualities. Focus on everything they're getting right. Be grateful—all the time—and laugh the rest off.
And that goes for kids, too, by the way—and pets, and waiters, and even our own selves. There it is. The whole trick to life. Be aggressively, loudly, unapologetically grateful.”
― Katherine Center, The Rom-Commers

“If you wait for other people to light you up, then I guess you're at the mercy of darkness.”
― Katherine Center, The Rom-Commers

“Whatever story you tell yourself about your life, that's the one that'll be true.”
― Katherine Center, The Rom-Commers

“That's just life.
Tragedy really is a given.
There are endless human stories, but they all end the same way.
So it can't be where you're going that matters. It has to be how you get there.
That's what I've decided.
It's all about the details you notice. And the joys you savor. And the hope you refuse to give up on.
It's all about writing the very best story of your life.
Not just about how you live it—but how you choose to tell it.”
― Katherine Center, The Rom-Commers

“The world keeps hanging on to this idea that love is for the gullible. But nothing could be more wrong. Love is only for the brave.”
― Katherine Center, What You Wish For

“Poor happy endings. They're so aggressively misunderstood. We act like "and they lived happily ever after" is trying to con us into thinking that nothing bad ever happened to anyone ever again. But that's never the way I read those words. I read them as "and they built a life together and looked after each other and made the absolute best of their lives.”
― Katherine Center, The Rom-Commers

“A good man buys you tampons when you run out. He does the dishes. He makes you coffee before you're awake in the morning. He listens to you when you're talking, even if it's about home decor. He goes out of his way to touch you, even if it's just your hand. He doesn't call it 'babysitting' when he looks after his own children. He calls you from work just to hear your voice. And he always thinks you're beautiful, even---no, especially---when you don't.”
― Katherine Center, The Lost Husband